M 57, the “Ring Nebula”: a new color view

After some time of stop, we took a new color image with our Celestron C14 robotic unit, to test the Baader Planetarium RGB filters we installed on the telescope, upgrading from the previous set.

We decided to image the Messier 57 planetary nebula, a very beautiful deep sky object in northern summer skies and results are shown above. It is the first RGB image taken with the new filters and we are very happy with them.

The image is the combination of an unfiltered luminance (12 x 300 seconds of total exposure) and RGB data (each channel comes from 7 x 300 seconds). All frames were taken unguided, completely trusting the Paramount ME robotic mount hosting the optical tube. Binning 1×1, with a resulting scale of 0.62″/pixel.

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